


Walls and Defences

by respoftw



Series: 30 prompt OTP challenge - McShep [14]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Fluff, Getting Together, Insecurity, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-19
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2019-03-06 22:08:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13420623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/respoftw/pseuds/respoftw
Summary: Rodney used to have walls and defences.





	Walls and Defences

**Author's Note:**

> 14\. Doing something with Ancient Tech

* * *

Rodney McKay had stopped caring about what other people thought of him a long time ago. He'd had to. Fourteen years of living with parents who didn't even try to hide their disappointment in the son that they were given was a solid foundation on which to build up his walls of defences.

Going to college at the age of fourteen was tough. He was painfully aware of how different he was to everyone else there, and agonisingly aware of how much the other students, the older students - especially the ones who had previously thought of themselves as the smartest in their class, or the smartest in their town, hell, even their state - resented him. A scrawny, pimply fourteen year old kid showing them up? Rodney took his first beating before orientation week had even finished.

So, the walls became fortresses and the fortresses became so well defended that he really thought he was past letting other people get through.

Then he'd been sent to Siberia, banished there more like it, on the word of a woman whose work and mind that he had really, truly admired and the fortress walls…they shook a little.

It was a temporary blip. He told himself that and it even turned out to be true. Siberia was cold and hostile and the perfect place to shore up those defences, to make them even tighter than before. He knew enough Russian to understand what they said about him but he didn't care. The taunts and the derogatory remarks broke against the barrier he had built, just as he'd intended when he built them.

Siberia became Antarctica which then, unbelievably, became Atlantis. He may not have cared what others thought about him but he still had an idea of it. He knew enough to know that the only reason he got the CSO position was that Carter - the golden girl - didn't want it. It helped, he supposed, that there were plenty of people who wouldn't be overly concerned if it did end up a one way trip. Not when it came to the prospect of losing him anyway.

Rodney didn't care about the why. How could he when it meant that he got Atlantis?

Stepping through the gate, taking that leap, into Atlantis was like coming home. He'd never felt so alive and the things he was discovering, the people that he discovered them with, they consumed him so completely that he didn't even notice the slow erosion of his carefully built and even more carefully maintained walls.

It might be more apt to say that Rodney McKay _thought_ he had stopped caring about what other people thought of him a long time ago.

The Ancient device was a trinket really, it held no scientific value at all and really shouldn't even have been in the science labs that day. It was a piece of entertainment, something much more suited to the sociologists and anthropologists who went gaga over every piece of art or media that the Ancients had forgot to pack when they abandoned the people of Pegasus.

But, whatever the reason, it was in the labs that day and a crowd had gathered around it, laughing and giggling like teenagers as Rodney strode in after the mid-morning senior staff meeting. He had walked over to break the gathering up, his voice already barking orders at them. He was even more assured that whatever they were looking at was a waste of time when he saw that it was holding an image of Dr Parrish. A much buffer then he was in real life - if Rodney’s glimpses in the communal showers had been right - Dr Parrish.

“Please, Dr McKay, it is very interesting,” the little Japanese scientist had said shyly. “The device recreates images that have been filtered through the lateral geniculate nucleus in the thalamus to the primary visual cortex. The result is unexpectedly unique to each user. Look,” the scientist - Kusanagi, Rodney thought her name was - reached out to take the device from Dr Simpson and, for a split second an image of what was possibly supposed to be Rodney appeared, although it looked a little more like him crossed with a cover model for the harlequin romances that Jeannie used to read but before the image could fully resonate with him, Kavanagh snatched the device out of her hand, a cruel grin on his face.

The image of harlequin Rodney disappeared and was quickly replaced by a different image.

It was another Rodney. It was Rodney as Kavanagh saw him. It was Rodney as he sometimes, in his worst moments, saw himself. A hairline that had receded beyond the point of no return and a waistline that distended the fabric of his too tight blue science t-shirt hit far too close to home.  And they were just the start. What was worst, what was hardest to see, was the look on the image’s face. A haughty, self important look that Rodney had seen in the mirror far too often to believe that it was all in Kavanagh’s head. It was the look of a man who thought he was better than everyone else and liked to shout that fact from the rooftops. As if on cue, the image started to wave its hands around in the air, spittle flying from its mouth as it berated someone. Rodney supposed he should be grateful that the damn thing didn't come with audio.

“An uncanny likeness, don't you think?” Kavanagh sneered.

If Rodney had chosen to look at the scientists that were gathered around, he would have seen that almost all of them were horrified at Kavanagh’s actions. But he didn't look, couldn't take his eyes away from the device so all he heard was the one snigger of agreement that a crony of Kavanagh let out.

Rodney's spine stiffened at that sound. He’d heard that sound before, a hundred times in a hundred different locations. He’d never heard it here before. He was astonished at how much it hurt.

Rodney dropped his eyes to the floor, turned on his heels and left the labs as quickly as he'd arrived.

So much for walls.

* * *

Rodney wasn't really surprised when John Sheppard barged into his quarters later that night. Why should he be when it was Sheppard who'd been instrumental in barging past Rodney's carefully built defences in the first place. Hell, before Sheppard, no one would even have noticed that he'd skipped lunch and dinner in the mess hall.

So, no, he wasn't surprised when Sheppard showed up but he was surprised that Sheppard had brought the damn device with him.

“Oh, what? It isn't enough that Kavanagh got to humiliate me? You want to have a go too?”

Rodney was halfway to his feet when John pushed him back down to the bed. “Kavanagh is an idiot,” he said. “Why do you even care what he thinks?”

“I _don't_ care,” Rodney snapped. “I don't care what anybody thinks of me.”

“Then you won't mind seeing this then.”

“John, don't.”

Ignoring him, John sat across the bed from Rodney and turned the device on.

Rodney sucked in a breath and expected the worst. Compared to John, Rodney knew exactly how he stacked up. John was lean where Rodney was stocky, firm where Rodney was soft. He was taller, fitter, better in every single way and just the thought of how John viewed Rodney in comparison to the perfection he saw in the mirror every day was enough to knock down whatever remained of his wall.

“Open your eyes, Rodney,” John said softly.

Rodney hadn't even realised he'd closed them. Taking a deep breath he opened his eyes and saw…he saw himself.

He shifted his eyes to look in the mirror that hung in the far wall to check and, yes, it was the same view. The same crooked mouth, the same thinning hair, the same broad shoulders and slight pudge of softness around the middle that not even the regular running for his life could shift. If he had to argue any differences it would be that his eyes weren't quite that brilliantly blue but there was no denying that it was him.

The image in the device moved, hands flying. But unlike Kavangh’s Rodney, this one wasn't cruel or berating. It was sarcastic and snarky and amused and - - Rodney didn't think anyone had ever seen him before, not really.

His parents certainly hadn't, nor had the teachers he'd had in college. None of his peers had, Samantha Carter definitely hadn't. But here was John Sheppard sitting across from him and seeing him. Really seeing him.

“That's me,” Rodney said, a hint of wonder in his voice.

“Well, yeah,” John shrugged. “What did you - -“

“No, I mean, that's _me_. You see _me_. Not some fantasy or some joke or - -“

John's face softened in understanding and was it Rodney's imagination or did the Rodney in the device’s eyes get a little bluer?

“Yeah, Rodney. I see you.”

They were definitely bluer.

Testing a theory, Rodney reached out and touched John's hand and breathed a huff of surprise as John simultaneously flushed and snapped the device closed. They sat in silence for a couple of beats, Rodney's hand still resting on John's own, before John shifted his hand and tangled their fingers together, squeezing hard.

“I see you,” John repeated. “Do you see me?”

“Every, ah, every atom of you.”

Rodney cringed at the corny reply but John just laughed, that strange demented ugly laugh that Rodney loved so much and for the first time in his memory he had no need for walls.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I decided to spend my Friday evening finishing a half-finished fic that has been sitting on my pages app for about three months. Rock and roll lifestyles, that's me!


End file.
